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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



POLITICAL OPINIONS IN 

177 6 and 18 6 3: 

A LETTER TO A VICTIM OF 

ARBITRARY ARRESTS 

AND 

"AMERICAN BASTILES." 



"Written constitutions sanctify and confirm great principles, but the latter are prior in existence to the 
former. The Habeas Corpus Act, the Bill of Rights, the Trial by Jury, are surer bulwarks of right and 
liberty than written constitutions. The establishment of our free institutions is the gradual -work of tims 
and experience, not the immediate result of any written instrument.'''' — Daniel Webster. 



/ 




NEW YORK: 
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH, 

683 BROADWAY. 

1863. 



ARBITRARY ARRESTS. 



To Mr. Francis Key Howard : 

Sir, — You were one of the first to suffer military 
arrest and imprisonment after the outbreak of the 
present most deplorable war — a war brought on by the 
machinations of desperate and disappointed men, for 
the ruin of our country and the destruction of our lib- 
erties. After a detention of fourteen months, during 
which } t ou suffered much privation and discomfort, you 
were discharged, without trial, by order of the Secre- 
tary of War ; and you at once availed yourself of your 
freedom to make public complaint and protest against 
this extraordinary treatment of a citizen of this Repub- 
lic. In this you were sustained by all of your sort, and 
particularly by the bought apologist of treason in this 
city. I therefore address to you some remarks which I 
propose to make upon this momentous subject of arbi- 
trary arrests and " American Bastiles," to which recent 
events have given new importance. The position in 
which you were publicly placed by your own acts and 
those of the Government must be my excuse for this 
use of your name. The opinions and statements which 
you have printed and published are, of course, open to 
public comment, without apology. 

You were arrested, not at the mandate of any court 
of law, but simply by the order of the President, 



4 ARBITRARY ARRESTS. 

through one of his Secretaries ; and you assert that this 
was done merely because of your " political opinions," 
and when you were " guiltless of any offence whatever." 
A graver case could not be presented to the considera- 
tion of the people. For if, at a time when he was 
bound by the letter of the law, the President transcended 
the letter of the law, to arrest a citizen, who was guilt- 
less of any offence, and because of his mere opinions 
upon politics, he must be impeached and deposed, or 
our liberties are on the high-road to extinction. How 
guiltless you were, and how entirely the opinions which 
you allege as the occasion of your arrest were confined 
to politics, your fellow-citizens are, fortunately, able to 
judge by the preface to your narrative; and, if the 
wicked and slothful servant could not complain that he 
was judged out of his own mouth, surely so good and 
true a citizen of the Republic, and so devoted a defend- 
er of lawful liberty as you have been, may well rejoice 
at a like judgment. Upon the third and fourth pages 
of your pamphlet are these paragraphs: — 

" Up to the time when the dissolution of the Union became, 
to most intelligent men, a patent fact, the people of Maryland 
had unanimously desired and striven for its perpetuation. 
Though they feared that the aggressive principles and growing 
power of the Republican party would, before many years, bring 
about a separation of the two sections of the country, and though 
they believed that the conduct of Mr. Lincoln and his party 
justified the action of the South, they still hoped and labored for 
the maintenance of the Union." 

* * * " When all these hopes were disappointed by the action 
of Northern men, and especially when Mr. Lincoln, on his acces- 
sion to office, appointed some of the most extreme partisans to 
high office at home and selected others to represent the country 
abroad, and gave ample evidence of his incapacity to understand 
the questions at issue, and of his determination neither to con- 
ciliate the Southern people nor to deal with what he called the 



ARBITRARY ARRESTS. 5 

"rebellion" according to the mode provided by the Constitution 
and laws, then a large proportion of the people of Maryland ex- 
pressed their sympathy for the South, and their conviction of 
the justice of its cause. They then asserted that the conquest of 
the South was an impossibility, that the Union was, in point of fact, 
dissolved, and they insisted that, in such case, the people of the 
state had the right to decide their own destiny for themselves." 

It appears from these passages that you are one of a 
certain number of men, of whom some are in Mary- 
land, where they shoot their fellow-citizens who are on 
their way to Washington by order of the President, 
and others in Missouri where they do likewise, others 
in the States south of Mason and Dixon's line where 
they fight the armies of the Republic in the open field, 
and others in Connecticut, New York City, ISTew Jersey 
and Ohio, where they do all in their power to help their 
Southern brethren. The persons, of whom you are one, 
think, according to your own statement above quoted, 
that previous to the date of your arrest, September 13th, 
1861, the dissolution of the Union was " a patent fact;" 
that at that time it was, " in point of fact, dissolved ;" 
that "the conduct of Mr. Lincoln and his party" "justi- 
fied the action of the South," or, as you again express 
it, produced a " conviction of the justice of its cause ; " 
that it was the duty of the President to " conciliate the 
Southern people," and to " deal with what he called the 
rebellion " according to certain views of the Constitu- 
tion, which would have prevented his dealing with it 
at all ; and that, under these circumstances, the people 
of Maryland, and consequently of any other common- 
wealth which is a component part of the Republic, 
" had the right to decide their own destiny for them- 
selves." 

Now, if in September, 1861, the Union was, in point 



6 ARBITRARY ARRESTS. 

of fact, dissolved, it was so dissolved solely by the ac- 
tion of certain people who had, in one way or another, 
obtained the control of affairs in eleven of the thirty- 
three states of the Union, and who defied its constitu- 
tional government. For neither by the supreme con- 
stituted legislative authority of the Union, nor by the 
people of the Union themselves, had there been any 
action on that subject whatever. And if the conduct 
of Mr. Lincoln and his party justified the action of the 
South and gave them a just cause, then the conduct of 
private citizens and political conventions justifies the 
destruction of any government ; for the action of these 
people who obtained control of the states in question, 
and in your view dissolved the Union, was taken -and 
perfected, as far as it was in their power to perfect it, 
before Mr. Lincoln came into office, and even before he 
had an opportunity of showing or declaring what would 
be the policy of his administration. And if Mr. Lin- 
coln should have conciliated the Southern people, so- 
styled, or have dealt with "what he called" the rebel- 
lion in a manner so exceedingly constitutional as to 
prevent him from dealing with it at all ; and if, because 
he did not then so deal with it, the conquest of the 
South, so-called, became an impossibility, the Union, 
in point of fact, dissolved, and the people of every com- 
monwealth invested with the right to decide their own 
destiny for themselves ; then the people in any single 
state may, at any time and for any cause, repudiate 
their national obligations, defy the national authority, 
demand with arms in their hands that they shall be 
conciliated or dealt with in so constitutional a manner 
that they shall not be dealt with at all ; and upon this 
the Republic is resolved again into its political elements, 
and the people in any quarter of it may set themselves 



ARBITRARY ARRESTS. 7 

up as a nation at their own sweet will. And these, O 
blameless man, and void of offence, you call political 
opinions. Which, indeed, they are, and of a very ex- 
traordinary sort. So would it be a political opinion to 
maintain that the people in Louisiana and Florida 
might restore those states respectively to France and to 
Spain, or that those in Vermont might return to their 
allegiance to the crown of Great Britain — that, if they 
chose to do so, their cause would be just, and they 
should be conciliated — and that, if they did do so by 
declaration, and took up arms, the Union would thereby 
be dissolved and the people in each of the other states 
acquire the right to decide their own destiny for them- 
selves. These political opinions are exactly those which 
are held by certain devoted and faithful citizens of the 
Republic, who once, like you, were guiltless of any 
offence — Jefferson Davis, Robert Toombs, and Louis 
Wigfall. Kay, even David L. Yulee holds these political 
opinions — he who sat in the Senate Chamber taking part 
in the National Government, drawing his pay from its 
Treasury, while he was plotting against it, sitting there 
meanwhile for the avowed purpose of crippling it, and 
using his very senatorial frank to convey particulars of 
the plot to a fellow conspirator. He, too, like you, was 
then guiltless of any offence whatever ; for he had not 
levied war against the United States, or been present, 
giving aid and comfort, on any occasion when such war 
was levied. Immaculate legislator ! immaculate citi- 
zen ! Brothers in patriotism, if not rivals in honor! 
Equally worthy of protection under the shield of the 
Constitution ! If you, guiltless man, with Fernando 
Wood, and Benjamin Wood, and Clement L. Yallan- 
digham, all Honorable, and all equally guiltless, could 
only put your political opinions in practice, which you 



8 ARBITRARY ARRESTS. 

all are trying to do, Jefferson Davis, and Robert Toombs, 
and Louis Wigfall, and David L. Yulee would see their 
political opinions in the ascendant. The Union would 
be, in point of fact, dissolved ; the people in every state 
would decide their own destiny for themselves; the just 
cause of slavery, daintily styled the South, would tri- 
umph, and what the President, and Congress, and the 
overwhelming majority of the people in twenty-two 
states of the Union now call the rebellion would have 
to be conciliated. 



But you do not put these political opinions in prac- 
tice; you only utter them, and therefore you claim to be 
guiltless. Listen ! You do not act upon these precious 
opinions, merely because you can not ; and you utter 
them, hoping to bring about such a condition of things 
that, by the help of Mr. Davis and the men who are 
sustaining his just cause, you may act upon them 
speedily. This you say is not a violation of any law, 
and your arrest and imprisonment therefor is altogether 
without precedent. Your former condition as a " polit- 
ical prisoner " you call " novel." You are right. But, 
Sir, have you and those with whom you are in active 
sympathy not yet discovered that the state of this coun- 
try is novel, and that new facts and new conditions re- 
quire new modes of action, and so, new names? These are 
times which make laws unto themselves, and in which 
precedents are not followed, but set up. This country, 
because of the course taken by the defenders of the 
just cause of slavery (white and black,) which is some- 
times called " the South," is passing through a great 
and fundamental political revolution, which involves 
all parts of it and which changes the political attitude, 



ARBITRARY ARRESTS. 9 

curtails the personal privileges, and enhances the polit- 
ical duties of every one of its citizens. As well might 
you set a municipal ordinance, or the right of every 
man to the quiet of his home, in the way of the fire 
department when a conflagration is raging; as well 
might you proclaim to the Mississippi, rushing through 
its riven banks, that by the law of a "sovereign" state it 
had been confined within certain limits, as attempt to 
stay the forces which are now in operation throughout 
this land, in every corner of it, by a paper constitution 
and a formal precedent. 

Yet it was decreed that we should not be without 
some precedent in this extremity ; and, fortunately for 
us, this precedent was set by so illustrious, and pure, 
and wise a man as George Washington. The evidence 
of it exists under his own hand and in the records of 
our Continental Congress. 

Throughout our struggle for the rights of freemen, 
which in the end became a war for independence, there 
were certain men who, in the words of the accurate 
and cautious historian of our Constitution,* "from a 
[mistaken] sense of duty, or from cupidity, or from 
some motive good or bad, made their election to adhere 
to the public enemy y and they were, therefore, right- 
fully classed, according to their personal activity and 
importance, among the enemies of the country, by those 
whose business it was to conduct its affairs and fight its 
battles/' These people were most active and, propor- 
tionably, most plentiful in South Carolina — the first 
state to declare for the "just cause" of slavery, other- 
wise called the South, with which you and certain other 
of the people in Maryland expressed your sympathy. 

* George Ticknor Curtis, more widely known as a prominent member 
of the Society for the Diffusion of Political Knowledge. 



10 ARBITRARY ARRESTS. 

But they existed all over the country ; and there were 
many in Queen's County, Long Island. Now, in Jan- 
uary, 1776, this George Washington, then general-in- 
chief of our forces, took very outrageous, if not unpre- 
cedented, measures against these people, who were then 
most wrongfully styled tories and traitors. For they 
only held certain " political opinions," and even more 
than you and Clement L. Vallandigham, were they 
guiltless of any offence whatever. For they did not 
actively and openly oppose the war. They were only 
" suspected -of designs unfriendly to the views of the 
Congress." The evidence of this was not what they 
did, or even what they said, but (Hear and avenge it, 
spirit of outraged Liberty!) what they did not do. 
They refused to elect members to the Provincial Con- 
vention ! So, thereupon, this George Washington, and 
this convention or congress, in which were Jefferson, 
and Hamilton, and Franklin, and Adams, and Hancock, 
and King, and Wolcott, and Livingston, and Morris, and 
Carroll, and Henry, and Randolph, and Pinckney, 
and Putledge, determined, independently of each other, 
to send a military force into Long Island. The 
troops entered at points both east and west of Queen's 
County, and, marching inward, they, horrible to relate! 
forcibly entered the houses of these blameless people, 
who merely held certain political opinions, and dis- 
armed every one — who defied the authority of Con- 
gress ? who was in arms to resist it ? who was giving 
material aid and comfort to the enemy ?— no, sad to 
tell, they " disarmed every inhabitant who had voted 
against choosing members to the Convention." They 
disarmed them all, and arrested many, and sent nine- 
teen of the most prominent — to the county jail, of 
course, to be tried according to law, and in the district, 



ARBITRARY ARRESTS. 11 

or at least the province, in which the crime was com- 
mitted. "Woe be to their memory, no ! They sent 
their guiltless victims actually out of the county, and 
(Hear it, priests and prophets of the mysteries of state 
sovereignty ! ) out of the province — even to Philadel- 
phia, the seat of the tyrannical government. This was 
done, too, to men covered by the asgis of the first Great 
Charter of our liberties, which declares that no freeman 
shall be imprisoned, or banished, or put to death, except 
by a jury, of his peers, and who were protected by the 
yet more comprehensive Bill of Rights, while we were 
fighting for those rights as Englishmen. This was done 
before the Declaration of Independence, and even be- 
fore the first Confederation. It was done in defiance of 
those great principles of liberty which our forefathers 
in England established, and which, in the language of 
Webster, our Constitution could only "sanctify and con- 
firm." For, as he wisely added, "the Habeas Corpus 
Act, the Bill of Rights, and the trial by jury are surer 
followers of right and liberty than written constitu- 
tions." 

Let us look at the reasons assigned for this monstrous 
violation of personal liberty and the riglit of free 
speech, which has not since been rivaled here, not even 
in the cases of yourself and the Member of Congress 
from Ohio. The Provincial Congress, setting forth that 
the majority of the inhabitants of Queen's county hav- 
ing avowed a design of remaining inactive spectators 
of the contest, and shown a general want, of public 
spirit, declared that " those who refuse to defend their coun- 
try should he excluded from its protection and he prevented 
from doing it injury." Congress then passed an Act pro- 
viding that all these men should be put out of the pro- 
tection of the United Colonies, that all trade and inter- 



12 ARBITRARY ARRESTS. 

course with them should cease, that any attorney or 
lawyer who should prosecute or defend any suit at law 
for any one of them, should be treated as a public 
enemy. Thus these men, guiltless, like you and Clem- 
ent L. Yallandigham, nay, less guilty of any offence 
whatever, were, for their " political opinions," formally 
outlawed. And by the orders of George "Washington, 
who was then, be it remembered, not in Long Island, 
but in Massachusetts, they would have been arbitrarily 
arrested and imprisoned in some "American Bastile," if 
it had not happened that they were previously arrested 
by direction of the Congress.* Washington, that des- 
potic foe of personal liberty, justified his violation of 
Magna Charta and the Bill of Eights by his most ex- 
traordinary plea : " Our enemies from the other side 
of the Atlantic will be sufficiently numerous ; it con- 
cerns us to have as few internal ones as possible."* The 
immediate occasion of his order was an apprehended 
movement of the British forces from Boston upon 
New York ; and General Washington, who had some 
knowledge of human nature as well as of arms and 
of State affairs, supposed that the plans of the public 
enemy might be furthered by the presence of these 
guiltless men who held the political opinions aforesaid. 
In fact, he seems to have thought that they would act 
just as you and certain others of the people of Mary- 
land would have acted, if our public enemy had entered 
Maryland, as it was reasonably expected that he would, 
about the time of your arrest ; and as he did about 
twelve months afterward, but went bootless back again, 
because you and the like of you had been arbitrarily 
thrust into "American Bastiles," without trial in your 

* See the Journals of Congress for January 3d, 17*76, aud the Writ- 
ings of Washington, Vol. III., pp. 230 and 255. 



ARBITRARY ARRESTS. 13 

district, and for a crime unknown to the law. But the 
Congress acted, as we have seen, on the general prin- 
ciple that, in circumstances of extreme moment, those 
who refuse to defend their country should be excluded 
from its protection and prevented from doing it injury. 
Congress was finally obliged to leave for a while these 
guiltless people who adhered to the public enemy to 
be dealt with by the authorities of the commonwealths 
in which they lived ; but that, in the words of the his- 
torian of the Constitution, was not because Congress had 
not performed " a high act of sovereignty which was en- 
tirely within the true scope of its own powers," but be- 
cause " it had not finally severed the political tie which 
had bound the country to Great Britain, and because 
it had no civil machinery of its own through which its 
operations could be conducted." But now those disa- 
bilities do not exist ; and the Congress of this country, 
by its civil, or, if necessary, its military machinery, 
can, in the performance of a high act of sovereignty, 
make such disposition of those who, from a sense of 
duty, or from cupidity, or from some motive good or 
bad, adhere to the public enemy, as is demanded by 
the public safety. The people will hold them to a 
stern reckoning for any needless violation of freedom 
of speech and personal liberty; but in the present ex- 
tremity of the country they will hold them to a reckon- 
ing yet sterner for any neglect to maintain or defend 
the Republic. 

For the question now put to the arbitrament of war, 
and which only war can settle, is whether the nation, 
for the formation and preservation of which your Mary- 
land grandfather, Francis Key, thanked the Almighty 
in the patriotic song* to which you refer with such par- 

* " Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation." 



14 ARBITRARY ARRESTS. 

donable pride, shall be preserved again and forever 
bj passing triumphantly through this its last and its 
supreme trial, or whether it shall be shivered into feeble 
and jarring fragments. If you can doubt which of 
these alternatives the people of this country have chosen, 
if you can suppose for a moment that they will allow 
the personal liberty and temporary comfort of you, or 
me, or a hundred or a thousand others to stand in the 
way of the preservation of the nation, you are a fit ten- 
ant for that sort of Bastile in which despotic men in 
their vulgar senses arbitrarily imprison high-toned 
lunatics. 



You complain of your sufferings, your lodging, and 
your fare ; you whine in all the moods and tenses, and 
vex every accessible officer of the Government because 
you had "nothing but the ordinary rations of the 
soldier, which are of the coarsest kind," because " the 
dinners consisted of fat pork and beans, a cup of thin 
soup and bread, or of boiled beef and potatoes, and 
bread on alternate days :" atrocious treatment, indeed, 
of a man guiltless of any offence whatever except the 
advocating of certain political opinions — those opinions 
being, that the cause of the slaveholding rebels, called 
the South, is a just cause, that' the Union is and ought 
to be dissolved, and that the people in every State have 
a right to obey or defy the national government at their 
pleasure. But, sir, there are hundreds of thousands of 
men who, for two years, have lived on these rations of 
the common soldier; who, while enduring fatigue and 
braving the elements, and wounds and death at the 
hands of the supporters of that just cause of which you 
speak, have been glad to get those dinners of pork 



ARBITRARY ARRESTS. 15 

and beans, and beef and potatoes, and bread, which so 
offended your high stomach, and who cannot supply 
themselves with other fare at "one dollar per day," as 
you were allowed to do ; and who have not been regaled 
with presents of "pheasants, chickens, tongues, pies, 
and other delicacies," as yon admit that yon were, and 
to which yon say (and I believe you) that a certain Mr. 
Warfield and yourself "consented, or perhaps, volun- 
teered, to take under your especial charge," — the only 
volunteering to which you, or, in spite of his name, Mr. 
Warfield, seem -to have been inclined. Now do you 
think that the people of this country will weep much 
because you, who have seen fit to adhere to the public 
enemy, lived for fourteen months, or should live for 
fourteen years, upon the best fare which the nation can 
afford to those who are giving up their lives in defence 
of the country against that public enemy? If so, the 
best thing you can do is to go across the line, step into 
the ranks of that enemy, and then perhaps the nation 
may find means to send you speedily to paradise itself 
— for a man so innocent as you are could not of course 
go elsewhere. But do not expect to be allowed to stay 
here and devote yourself to making the task of the 
public enemy easy. While we are spending blood and 
money like- water, while our brothers suffer hardships, 
wounds and death, and our mothers mourn, and yet will 
be comforted, because their sons have fallen in the ser- 
vice of their country, while we are in a death struggle 
to preserve this republic from disintegration, and this 
government from destruction, for the sake of the per- 
petuation and propagation of human slavery, do not 
deceive yourself for a moment with the notion that we 
are so bereft of common sense as to allow any law or 
privilege to give you security while you strive to cut 



16 ARBITRARY ARRESTS. 

short our resources, diminish our armies, and thwart 
our leaders,- and thus serve, a thousand fold more than 
if you opposed us in the field, the purposes of the 
public enemy. Words are weapons in civil war. 



But are you not to be allowed to express your politi- 
cal opinions? have you not a right to the protection of 
the law, and the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights 
and Magna Charta ? Without a doubt. In all the ordi- 
nary and civil affairs of life your rights are unchanged, 
and you may discuss the politics of the country and 
criticize the measures of the government to your heart's 
content. That is a privilege which we all claim, and 
all exercise ; which the government has no right to re- 
strain, and which it does not restrain. For since this 
war broke out, how many of us, with voice and pen, 
have ceaselessly criticized and protested against its 
measures: — its Emancipation Proclamation, weak, un- 
wise, incapable of good, capable only of harm, consoli- 
dating the rebels and nerving them with fiercer hate, 
dividing and enfeebling the loyal, not taking by its own 
power one man, slave or free, from the public enemy, 
but repelling many from the nation's ranks: — against 
its displacement of Generals who were serving it as 
well as possible under the circumstances in which they 
were placed ; against its miserable prevarications about 
the results of our campaigns, its distrust of the people, 
and its feeble fumbling with our neutral foes. This we 
have done, and this we shall do openly and publicly, and 
there is none to molest or make us afraid. But while 
we have done thus, and you might have done thus, with 
impunity, there is one course of conduct that, if we 
are of enough importance to be worth attention, we can- 



ARBITRARY ARRESTS. 17 

not pursue unmolested-: we cannot "adhere to the 
public enemy." When we do that, our safety and our 
rights must yield to the safety and the rights of the 
nation. We may show this adherence as those much 
abused tories and traitors of Queen's county did in 
1776, by refusing to elect delegates to a convention, by 
avowing " a design of remaining indifferent spectators 
of the contest," by "a general want of public spirit," 
or by declaring the Republic destroyed, its government 
at an end, and any efforts to preserve the one and 
maintain the other, " attempts to build up a monarchy 
upon the ruins of our free government,"* and to "estab- 
lish a despotism in this country more cruel and des- 
potic than ever existed before,"* or by pronouncing the 
cause of the public enemy "a just cause." We may 
show our adherence in these or in other ways, but when 
we do so adhere to the public enemy, and our adherence 
becomes a help to him, a hindrance to our armies, and 
dangerous to the Republic, then we must expect to 
hear, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas 
Jefferson, and John Adams, and Rufus King, and 
Charles Carroll, and Edmund Randolph, and Charles 
Pinckney, and John Rutleclge, that " those who refuse 
to defend their country should be excluded from its 
protection, and prevented from doing it injury." Then 
we shall find that those who conduct our affairs and 
command our armies, if they have a grain of sense, 
and a spark of resolution, or one touch of that terrible 
earnestness which the desperation of their cause has 
given to the leaders of what is " called the rebellion," 
will act upon the judgment of George Washington, 
that " the enemies of the country are sufficiently numer- 
ous on the other side of the Potomac, and that it is im- 

* Speech of Clement L. Vallandingham at Dayton, Ohio. 



18 ARBITRARY ARRESTS. 

portant to have as few internal ones as possible." Will 
act upon it ? must act upon it ; if not by virtue of con- 
stitutions, and bills of rights, and magna chartas, then, 
in spite of them, as he did, and in virtue of a greater 
charter — the preservation of this republic, the safety 
of this nation, itself the living charter of final freedom 
to all mankind. This will be done and must be done, 
not because we are at war, and therefore deprived of 
some of the rights of peace, but because we are at war, 
not with another nation, but among ourselves. The de- 
termination of the slaveholders to resist the progress of 
Christian civilization, has forced upon us a fundamental 
revolution. The question now is, not one about politi- 
cal opinions or the construction of the Constitution, but 
which is the stronger, this republic or its enemies, the 
spirit of liberty or the spirit of slavery. There was 
a time when an abolitionist newspaper like The Tribune, 
might guiltlessly, but most unwisely, avow itself in 
favor of a peaceful severance of the Union by the same 
authority which formed it — the people of the United 
States. But that time has gone past. There is now an 
enemy which is attempting to sever the Union in spite 
of that authority, and by the sword ; and whoever ad 
heres to that enemy must, in so far as it is worth the 
trouble, himself be treated as a public enemy. Nor is 
this a quarrel to be made up by the laying down of 
arms and a return to the old position. This the slave- 
holders know. From the beginning they have seen 
that they must conquer or submit. The enemy which 
brought this calamity upon the nation must and will 
not only be conquered but extinguished. This enemy 
is slavery. Slaves may be held for a time in certain 
States, in spite of this revolution ; but slavery, as a 
political power, must be destroyed forever. Not more 



ARBITRARY ARRESTS. 19 

true was it in 1776 than it is in 1863, that old things 
have passed away and all things have become new. 

Your fellow-citizen, and, as you act, your friend or 
your enemy, 

Sidney Cromwell. 

New York, May 23, 1863. 



POLITICAL OPINIONS IN 

1776 and 186 3: 

A LETTER TO A VICTIM OF 

ARBITRARY ARRESTS 

AND 

"AMERICAN BASTILES." 



"Written constitutions sanctify and eoufirm great principles, but the latter are prior in existence to the 
former. Tht* Habeas Corpus Act, the l.ill of Rights, the Trial by Jury, are surer bulwarks of rigbt and 
liberl than written constitutions. The establish mint of our free institutions is the gradual work- uf time 
ience, not the immediate result of aw/ written instrument." — Damel Webster. 



XEW YORK: 
ANSON D . F . RANDOLPH 

6 8 3 BROADWAY. 
1863. 



